This is a repository for all cool scientific discussion and fascination. Scientific facts, theories, and overall cool scientific stuff that you'd like to share with others. Stuff that makes you smile and wonder at the amazing shit going on around us, that most people don't notice.

Absolutely, it's because we are used to it. Used to the atmospheric pressure that bears down on us at all times. We like to think that we'd be an equally proficient species in space. But the truth is that our human bodies don't do worth a shit in space without the Earthly physics affecting our bodies at all times. It's an underrepresented fact of space travel. The human body just goes to shit outside of Earth's atmosphere.

Not quite true. We are not "used to" the earths velocity. There is simply nothing to get used to. You can not feel velocity. You can feel the vibrations from velocity and you can feel things running into you, but velocity itself you cannot. When you are in a car, you can feel the acceleration because acceleration you can feel. You can feel the wind against you if the windows open because that is basically just air molecules running into you. You can feel the physical bumps in the road that the car hits on the road.

Remember that velocity is relative. When you are saying that we are moving at some speed you have to have a point of reference. When you say The Earth spins at 1,000 mph you mean relative to the center of the earth. When you say that we hurl through space at 67,000 mph you mean relative to the sun. Also our solar system travels at about 560,000 mph around the center of the milky way. And the milk way hurls through the universe at some speed relative other galaxies. But it is all relative.

And to answer Literature's other question, if the earth were to magically stop spinning and we stopped with it, we would not feel any different walking around. There would be other serious effects of it (things like the oceans changing and change in the magnetic field of the earth) but we would not really notice a physical difference walking around.

Absolutely, it's because we are used to it. Used to the atmospheric pressure that bears down on us at all times. We like to think that we'd be an equally proficient species in space. But the truth is that our human bodies don't do worth a shit in space without the Earthly physics affecting our bodies at all times. It's an underrepresented fact of space travel. The human body just goes to shit outside of Earth's atmosphere.

Wow, that is fascinating. You should include links, btw.

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Wow, that's quite interesting. I knew about Tesla but didn't realize he did all of that. And I didn't know the truth about Edison. Is all of this, in fact, true?

Yup. Tesla is one of the most fascinating people I've ever read about. His list of "Did you know" facts is just astonishing....

A couple more:

In 1886, Tesla persuaded investors to fund the Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing Company. Tesla invented a revolutionary arc lamp and the company made money. The investors then promptly reaped the profits and fired Tesla, who was forced into manual labor to survive.

Although Tesla demonstrated his invention of the radio in 1893 and received a patent for it, the patent office stripped the award in 1904 and gave it instead to Guglielmo Marconi. Since both Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie had invested in Marconi and not in Tesla. Tesla fought for 29 years to reacquire his patent, finally getting a hearing in the US Supreme Court. With finding that 15 of Marconi's 16 patents were actually invented by Tesla himself, the court rules in Tesla's favor in 1944 – a year after his death.

When inventor George Washington Carver’s paintings were displayed at the 1893 World's Fair Exposition, they were lit using Tesla's AC power – although Edison refused to allow use of his light bulbs.

In order to keep electricity inexpensive to the public, Tesla sold George Westinghouse his own royalties, which were worth $12 million, for just $216,000. If Tesla had kept his royalties, he may have been the first billionaire, sharing financial history with the likes of John D. Rockefeller the worlds first in 1916, Howard Hughes, and Bill Gates who became the first man to reach $100 billion in 1999.

Tesla and the great storyteller, Mark Twain, were very close friends.

He claimed to have designed a death ray – or "peace ray,"(See... I wasn't joking. ) as he preferred – that could electrocute an approaching army completely at a distance of 200 miles.

Tesla adorned the cover of Time Magazine in 1931, and was praised by Albert Einstein as "an eminent pioneer in the realm of high frequency currents..."

In 1928 he received his last patent, which was a forerunner to the modern day helicopter, which was initially conceived of by Leonardo da Vinci. In his lifetime some have stated that he had applied for 840 patents and received 700. What can be found is that he has 112 US Patents and 34 International Patents. Regardless, he was known as the Father of Radio, Television, Power Transmission, and the Induction Motor.

Nikola Tesla's Death:

On January 7, 1943: Tesla died penniless and alone in room #3327 of the Hotel New Yorker. Soon after his death, the United States Government (with the help of the FBI) seized all of his research materials and writings, most of which never again reappeared.

Wow, that's quite interesting. I knew about Tesla but didn't realize he did all of that. And I didn't know the truth about Edison. Is all of this, in fact, true?

Yes.

One of my favorite Tesla stories was how he lit up a bunch of lights by transmittng power to them wirelessly over a distance of several miles in the 1890s. Everyone assumed it was just a trick, because obviously something like that isn't really possible. Except that some scientists managed to do it again, but only from about 10 feet away. Also, they didn't manage to do it until 2007.

Tesla was very good at being possibly the most intelligent person ever. Edison was very good at taking advantage of intelligent, naive foreigners (Tesla was not the only person he treated like this).

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Hippos secrete a reddish oily fluid sometimes called "blood sweat" from special glands in their skin. But the fluid is not sweat. Unlike sweat, which some mammals (including humans) secrete onto their skin, where it evaporates and therefore cools the body, this fluid functions as a skin moisturizer, water repellent and antibiotic. It appears red when exposed to full sunlight, which led the first European discoverers in Africa to call it "blood sweat."

Hippos mostly try to avoid direct sunlight by lying in water during the day and feeding at night. Their skin is very sensitive to both drying and sunburn, so the secretion acts like an automatic skin ointment. It also protects the skin from becoming waterlogged when a hippo is in the water. The detailed chemical composition of this secretion, which is unique to hippos, remains something of a mystery.